If there is a collective stupidity in the modern world, a tragicomedy peculiar to developed countries and played out ad nauseam in the media and popular culture, it is that of our perception of the human lifespan, which is just long enough for people to kid themselves about its laughable brevity. We are like high-wire performers enslaved by our sense of balance, enraptured by the feat and so prevented from looking down.
It is a sad day when a person gains enough insight and understanding to situate every individual on a much longer timeline. People’s ambitions evanesce in a puff of smoke. Self-importance begins to seem like sadism. Even presidents and world leaders shrink to the dimensions of a tiny photo with...
Upon reaching a certain stage of life, usually after the age of 30 but always when enough time has elapsed to make you wonder about the slowly accumulating rubbish heap of your past, regrets come up as an infallible sign that you are getting older. You start to hem and haw. You lament the paths not...
A person’s individuality is like an unfinished puzzle. But while some people have pieces aplenty and have managed to place them into a coherent order that has all the makings of an actual picture, others have only a few pieces scattered around or none at all—or what’s worse, the wrong ones...
Writing is an apparently simple act. The person doing the writing puts words in order, one after another, line by line, adding squiggles and dots here and there to make the appropriate pauses before concluding with a mighty flourish: I am a writer, says the person who has written. And that is...
